- Linking Images and Sounds of Aftermath of Great Earthquake and Tsunami to Google Maps -

TOKYO, March 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- TV Asahi Corporation launched "REC from 3/11 - Overcoming Japan's Biggest Quake," a website that connects news footage related to the great earthquake and tsunami of 2011 to locations on Google Maps. Since the fateful day of the disaster on March 11, 2011, TV Asahi camera crews have meticulously covered the region, using a technique called "fixed position filming," which requires returning to a chosen location over time to film the exact same shot. "REC from 3/11 - Overcoming Japan's Biggest Quake" has linked this unique footage from more than 100 disaster-hit locations with their respective locations on Google Maps. This enables the viewer to move through the map, choose a city or village and see and hear what has happened over the course of the past eight years.

"REC from 3/11" was realized with the support from Google News Initiative (GNI). In December 2018, YouTube channel "ANN News CH" was granted "YouTube Innovation Funding," a GNI project aimed at supporting the future of news in online video. TV Asahi's project team decided on an approach different from traditional TV broadcasting and capitalized on a feature unique to the internet. In order to create and run this web-based project, TV Asahi developed a distribution system that simultaneously uploads videos to YouTube and embeds them onto Google Maps. The company plans to use this system in the future to provide various digital news projects on diverse topics.